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Speciation and evolutionary genetics

This section considers studies into speciation and the role of inheritance and variation in individuals and among populations in evolution.

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  1. The family Labridae made up of 519 species in the world. The functional evolution of the feeding-related jaws leaded to differentiation of species, and the pharyngeal jaw apparatus evolved independently, but e...

    Authors: Dong Liu, Yuanyuan Zhang, Ming Zhang, Jinquan Yang and Wenqiao Tang

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:125

    Content type: Research article

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  2. Hybridization is a central mechanism in evolution, producing new species or introducing important genetic variation into existing species. In plant-pathogenic fungi, adaptation and specialization to exploit a ...

    Authors: Britta Bueker, Marco Alexandre Guerreiro, Michael E. Hood, Andreas Brachmann, Sven Rahmann and Dominik Begerow

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:123

    Content type: Research article

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  3. The majority of parthenogenetic vertebrates derive from hybridization between sexually reproducing species, but the exact number of hybridization events ancestral to currently extant clonal lineages is difficu...

    Authors: David Tarkhnishvili, Alexey Yanchukov, Mehmet Kürşat Şahin, Mariam Gabelaia, Marine Murtskhvaladze, Kamil Candan, Eduard Galoyan, Marine Arakelyan, Giorgi Iankoshvili, Yusuf Kumlutaş, Çetin Ilgaz, Ferhat Matur, Faruk Çolak, Meriç Erdolu, Sofiko Kurdadze, Natia Barateli…

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:122

    Content type: Research article

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  4. The three main subspecies of house mice, Mus musculus castaneus, Mus musculus domesticus, and Mus musculus musculus, are estimated to have diverged ~ 350-500KYA. Resolution of the details of their evolutionary hi...

    Authors: Megan Phifer-Rixey, Bettina Harr and Jody Hey

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:120

    Content type: Research article

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  5. Many species are threatened with extinction as their population sizes decrease with changing environments or face novel pathogenic threats. A reduction of genetic diversity at major histocompatibility complex (MH...

    Authors: Christelle Vangenot, José Manuel Nunes, Gaby M. Doxiadis, Estella S. Poloni, Ronald E. Bontrop, Natasja G. de Groot and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:119

    Content type: Research article

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  6. Deep mitochondrial divergences were observed in Scandinavian populations of the terrestrial to semi-aquatic annelid Fridericia magna (Clitellata: Enchytraeidae). This raised the need for testing whether the taxon...

    Authors: Svante Martinsson, Mårten Klinth and Christer Erséus

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:116

    Content type: Research article

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  7. Understanding the structure and variability of adaptive loci such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes is a primary research goal for evolutionary and conservation genetics. Typically, classical...

    Authors: Medardo Cruz-López, Guillermo Fernández, Helen Hipperson, Eduardo Palacios, John Cavitt, Daniel Galindo-Espinosa, Salvador Gómez del Angel, Raya Pruner, Oscar Gonzalez, Terry Burke and Clemens Küpper

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:114

    Content type: Research article

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  9. The Caribbean offers a unique opportunity to study evolutionary dynamics in insular mammals. However, the recent extinction of most Caribbean non-volant mammals has obstructed evolutionary studies, and poor DN...

    Authors: Roseina Woods, Samuel T. Turvey, Selina Brace, Christopher V. McCabe, Love Dalén, Emily J. Rayfield, Mark J. F. Brown and Ian Barnes

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:106

    Content type: Research article

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  10. Microbiomes can have profound impacts on host biology and evolution, but to date, remain vastly understudied in spiders despite their unique and diverse predatory adaptations. This study evaluates closely rela...

    Authors: Sara J. Dunaj, Brian R. Bettencourt, Jessica E. Garb and Robert M. Brucker

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:104

    Content type: Research article

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  11. Many animals rely heavily on olfaction to navigate their environment. Among rodents, olfaction is crucial for a wide range of social behaviors. The vomeronasal olfactory system in particular plays an important...

    Authors: Caitlin H. Miller, Polly Campbell and Michael J. Sheehan

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:99

    Content type: Research article

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  12. East African lake cichlids are one of the most impressive examples of an adaptive radiation. Independently in Lake Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi, several hundreds of species arose within the last 10 million...

    Authors: Luca Penso-Dolfin, Angela Man, Tarang Mehta, Wilfried Haerty and Federica Di Palma

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:69

    Content type: Research article

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  13. Mygalomorph spiders represent a diverse, yet understudied lineage for which genomic level data has only recently become accessible through high-throughput genomic and transcriptomic sequencing methods. The Aptost...

    Authors: Nicole L. Garrison, Michael S. Brewer and Jason E. Bond

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:68

    Content type: Research article

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  14. Alternative splicing (AS) generates various transcripts from a single gene and thus plays a significant role in transcriptomic diversity and proteomic complexity. Alu elements are primate-specific transposable el...

    Authors: Se-Hee Choe, Sang-Je Park, Hyeon-Mu Cho, Hye-Ri Park, Ja-Rang Lee, Young-Hyun Kim and Jae-Won Huh

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:66

    Content type: Research article

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  15. Invasion of organisms into new ecosystems is increasingly common, due to the global trade in commodities. One of the most complex post-invasion scenarios occurs when an invasive species is related to a native ...

    Authors: Erick M. G. Cordeiro, Laura M. Pantoja-Gomez, Julia B. de Paiva, Antônio R. B. Nascimento, Celso Omoto, Andrew P. Michel and Alberto S. Correa

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:61

    Content type: Research article

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  17. Chromosomal rearrangements are thought to be an important driving force underlying lineage diversification, but their link to speciation continues to be debated. Antarctic teleost fish of the family Notothenii...

    Authors: Juliette Auvinet, Paula Graça, Agnès Dettai, Angel Amores, John H. Postlethwait, H. William Detrich III, Catherine Ozouf-Costaz, Olivier Coriton and Dominique Higuet

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:39

    Content type: Research article

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  19. Modularity is important for evolutionary innovation. The recombination of existing units to form larger complexes with new functionalities spares the need to create novel elements from scratch. In proteins, th...

    Authors: Elias Dohmen, Steffen Klasberg, Erich Bornberg-Bauer, Sören Perrey and Carsten Kemena

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:30

    Content type: Research Article

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  20. Recent human transcriptomic analyses revealed a very large number of testis-enriched genes, many of which are involved in spermatogenesis. This comprehensive transcriptomic data lead us to the question whether...

    Authors: Helmut Schaschl and Bernard Wallner

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:27

    Content type: Research article

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  21. The need for enhancing the productivity of fisheries in Africa triggered the introduction of non-native fish, causing dramatic changes to local species. In East Africa, the extensive translocation of Nile tila...

    Authors: Papius Dias Tibihika, Manuel Curto, Esayas Alemayehu, Herwig Waidbacher, Charles Masembe, Peter Akoll and Harald Meimberg

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:16

    Content type: Research article

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  22. The piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that specifically repress transposable elements (TEs) in the germline of Drosophila. Despite our expanding understanding of TE:piRNA interaction, wheth...

    Authors: Shiqi Luo, Hong Zhang, Yuange Duan, Xinmin Yao, Andrew G. Clark and Jian Lu

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:14

    Content type: Research article

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  23. Understanding the genomic basis of phenotypic diversity can be greatly facilitated by examining adaptive radiations with hypervariable traits. In this study, we focus on a rapidly diverged species group of mor...

    Authors: Mauricio Losilla, David Michael Luecke and Jason R. Gallant

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:6

    Content type: Research article

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  24. Ecological speciation is a prominent mechanism of diversification but in many evolutionary radiations, particularly in invertebrates, it remains unclear whether supposedly critical ecological traits drove or f...

    Authors: Bert Van Bocxlaer, Claudia M. Ortiz-Sepulveda, Pieter R. Gurdebeke and Xavier Vekemans

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:5

    Content type: Research article

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  25. Orange jasmine has a complex nomenclatural history and is now known as Murraya paniculata (L.) Jack. Our interest in this common ornamental stemmed from the need to resolve its identity and the identities of clos...

    Authors: Chung Huy Nguyen, G. Andrew C. Beattie, Anthony M. Haigh, Inggit Puji Astuti, David J. Mabberley, Peter H. Weston and Paul Holford

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:236

    Content type: Research article

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  26. Due to the environmental heterogeneity along elevation gradients, alpine ecosystems are ideal study objects for investigating how ecological variables shape the genetic patterns of natural species. The highest...

    Authors: Zhigang Wu, Xinwei Xu, Juan Zhang, Gerhard Wiegleb and Hongwei Hou

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:228

    Content type: Research article

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  27. The process by which populations evolve to become new species involves the emergence of various reproductive isolating barriers (RIB). Despite major advancements in understanding this complex process, very lit...

    Authors: Tiffany A. Chin, Carla E. Cáceres and Melania E. Cristescu

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:216

    Content type: Research article

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  28. Secondary contact between closely related lineages can result in a variety of outcomes, including hybridization, depending upon the strength of reproductive barriers. By examining the extent to which different...

    Authors: Margaret L. Haines, Gordon Luikart, Stephen J. Amish, Seth Smith and Emily K. Latch

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:199

    Content type: Research article

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  29. Heliopora coerulea, the blue coral, is the octocoral characterized by its blue skeleton. Recently, two Heliopora species were delimited by DNA markers: HC-A and HC-B. To clarify the genomic divergence of these He...

    Authors: Akira Iguchi, Yuki Yoshioka, Zac H. Forsman, Ingrid S.S. Knapp, Robert J. Toonen, Yuki Hongo, Satoshi Nagai and Nina Yasuda

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:187

    Content type: Research article

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  30. The Neacomys genus is predominantly found in the Amazon region, and belongs to the most diverse tribe of the Sigmodontinae subfamily (Rodentia, Cricetidae, Oryzomyini). The systematics of this genus and questions...

    Authors: Willam Oliveira da Silva, Julio Cesar Pieczarka, Marlyson Jeremias Rodrigues da Costa, Malcolm Andrew Ferguson-Smith, Patricia Caroline Mary O’Brien, Ana Cristina Mendes-Oliveira, Rogério Vieira Rossi and Cleusa Yoshiko Nagamachi

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:184

    Content type: Research article

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  31. Triplophysa stoliczkae is the most widespread species in the genus Triplophysa and may have originated from morphological convergence. To understand the evolutionary history of T. stoliczkae, we employed a multil...

    Authors: Chenguang Feng, Yongtao Tang, Sijia Liu, Fei Tian, Cunfang Zhang and Kai Zhao

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:177

    Content type: Research article

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  32. Hybridogenesis can represent the first stage towards hybrid speciation where the hybrid taxon eventually weans off its parental species. In hybridogenetic water frogs, the hybrid Pelophylax kl. esculentus (genome...

    Authors: Sylvain Dubey, Tiziano Maddalena, Laura Bonny, Daniel L. Jeffries and Christophe Dufresnes

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:164

    Content type: Research article

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  33. Understanding the genetic basis of local adaptation has long been the concern of biologists. Identifying these adaptive genetic variabilities is crucial not only to improve our knowledge of the genetic mechani...

    Authors: Xue-Xia Zhang, Bao-Guo Liu, Yong Li, Ying Liu, Yan-Xia He, Zhi-Hao Qian and Jia-Xin Li

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:160

    Content type: Research article

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  34. Evolutionary patterns of scleractinian (stony) corals are difficult to infer given the existence of few diagnostic characters and pervasive phenotypic plasticity. A previous study of Hawaiian Montipora (Scleracti...

    Authors: Regina L. Cunha, Zac H. Forsman, Roy Belderok, Ingrid S. S. Knapp, Rita Castilho and Robert J. Toonen

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:153

    Content type: Research article

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  37. Current patterns of population genetic variation may have been shaped by long-term evolutionary history and contemporary demographic processes. Understanding the underlying mechanisms that yield those patterns...

    Authors: Weiran Wang, Yitao Zheng, Jindong Zhao and Meng Yao

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:134

    Content type: Research article

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  38. Predicted genetic consequences of asexuality include high intraindividual genetic diversity (i.e., the Meselson effect) and accumulation of deleterious mutations (i.e., Muller’s Ratchet), among others. These c...

    Authors: Laia Leria, Miquel Vila-Farré, Eduard Solà and Marta Riutort

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:130

    Content type: Research article

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  39. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) is the world’s highest and largest plateau, but the role of its uplift in the evolution of species or biotas still remains poorly known. Toad-headed lizards of the reproductiv...

    Authors: Chao-Chao Hu, Yan-Qing Wu, Li Ma, Yi-Jing Chen and Xiang Ji

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:114

    Content type: Research article

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  40. A major focus of evolutionary biology is the formation of reproductive barriers leading to divergence and ultimately, speciation. Often, it is not clear whether the separation of populations is complete or if ...

    Authors: Pnina Cohen and Eyal Privman

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:111

    Content type: Research article

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  41. Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and interior spruce (Picea glauca, Picea engelmannii, and their hybrids) are distantly related conifer species. Previous studies identified 47 genes containing variants associated ...

    Authors: Mengmeng Lu, Kathryn A. Hodgins, Jon C. Degner and Sam Yeaman

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:110

    Content type: Research article

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  42. In the arms race between hosts and parasites, genes involved in the immune response are targets for natural selection. Toll-Like Receptor (TLR) genes play a role in parasite detection as part of the innate imm...

    Authors: Jennifer Antonides, Samarth Mathur, Mekala Sundaram, Robert Ricklefs and J. Andrew DeWoody

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:107

    Content type: Research article

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  43. Hyperdiverse mtDNA with more than 5% of variable synonymous nucleotide sites can lead to erroneous interpretations of population genetic differentiation patterns and parameters (φST, DEST). We illustrate this by ...

    Authors: S. Fourdrilis and T. Backeljau

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:92

    Content type: Research article

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    The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:103

  44. Different population trajectories are expected to impact the signature of neutral and adaptive processes at multiple levels, challenging the assessment of the relative roles of different microevolutionary forc...

    Authors: Rita G. Rocha, Vanessa Magalhães, José V. López-Bao, Wessel van der Loo, Luis Llaneza, Francisco Alvares, Pedro J. Esteves and Raquel Godinho

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:90

    Content type: Research article

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  45. DNA barcoding has been developed as a useful tool for species discrimination. Several sequence-based species delimitation methods, such as Barcode Index Number (BIN), REfined Single Linkage (RESL), Automatic B...

    Authors: Zhijun Zhou, Huifang Guo, Li Han, Jinyan Chai, Xuting Che and Fuming Shi

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:79

    Content type: Research article

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  46. Synbranchidae or swamp eels are fishes belonging to the order Synbranchiformes that occur in both freshwater and occasionally in brackish. They are worldwide distributed in tropical and subtropical rivers of f...

    Authors: Weerayuth Supiwong, Krit Pinthong, Kriengkrai Seetapan, Pasakorn Saenjundaeng, Luiz A. C. Bertollo, Ezequiel A. de Oliveira, Cassia F. Yano, Thomas Liehr, Sumalee Phimphan, Alongklod Tanomtong and Marcelo B Cioffi

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:73

    Content type: Research article

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  47. Much of the debate over the evolutionary consequences of hybridization on genetic divergence and speciation results from the breakdown or reinforcement of reproductive barriers in secondary hybrid zones. Among...

    Authors: Wan-Jin Liao, Bi-Ru Zhu, Yue-Fei Li, Xiao-Meng Li, Yan-Fei Zeng and Da-Yong Zhang

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:70

    Content type: Research article

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  48. The molecular basis of the incipient stage of speciation is still poorly understood. Cichlid fish species in Lake Victoria are a prime example of recent speciation events and a suitable system to study the ada...

    Authors: Shohei Takuno, Ryutaro Miyagi, Jun-ichi Onami, Shiho Takahashi-Kariyazono, Akie Sato, Herbert Tichy, Masato Nikaido, Mitsuto Aibara, Shinji Mizoiri, Hillary D. J. Mrosso, Semvua I. Mzighani, Norihiro Okada and Yohey Terai

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:68

    Content type: Research article

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  49. Examples of rapid evolution are common in nature but difficult to account for with the standard population genetic model of adaptation. Instead, selection from the standing genetic variation permits rapid adap...

    Authors: David I. Dayan, Xiao Du, Tara Z. Baris, Dominique N. Wagner, Douglas L. Crawford and Marjorie F. Oleksiak

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:61

    Content type: Research article

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  50. Alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) are taxonomically pervasive strategies adopted by individuals to maximize reproductive success within populations. Even for conditionally-dependent traits, consensus pos...

    Authors: K. A. Stewart, R. Draaijer, M. R. Kolasa and I. M. Smallegange

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:58

    Content type: Research article

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